Best of #econtwitter - Week of December 13, 2020
www.bestofecontwitter.com
Best of #econtwitter - Week of December 13, 2020
Welcome readers old and new to this week’s edition of Best of Econtwitter. Thanks to those sharing suggestions, over email or on Twitter @just_economics.
Paper summaries
Study finds that the release of Facebook in a new language led to an increase in political protests in countries where the language is used.
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
They rounded up a bunch of high human capital people, sent them off to (maybe) nonrandom remote locations but in *random proportions* - then come back ~65 years later to find higher education, higher wages and more economic development 🔥
Don’t see papers like this everyday
Pierre-Louis Vézina @pl_vezina
"We document trends in new work, now we document trends in innovation." Bryan Seegmiller (@MITSloan) w/ @davidautor #EGgrantee #EG2021
Earnings penalties that come with mental illness:
Depression: -34% $
BD: -38% $
Schizophrenia: -74% $
But, treatments for mental illness help eliminate a significant portion of these $$$ penalties.
Evidence (from 🇩🇰): "Career Effects of Mental Health"
barbarabiasi.com/uploads/1/0/1/…
^see also: lit review on the causal relationship between (poverty) <-> (mental illness)
Do elite schools improve students' outcomes?
Students who just make it in elite schools in Chicago do not have better results later on, relative to students who just miss out on entry. Those from disadvantaged backgrounds even get *worse* results.
aeaweb.org/articles?id=10…
^also commentary from Arpit Gupta here
Just posted a new (short!) working paper, with David Arnold (@UCSDEcon) and Will Dobbie (@Kennedy_School)
It’s called “Measuring Racial Discrimination in Algorithms”
bit.ly/37Sbhv4
Here's an (even shorter!) summary thread 👇
Here’s a thread about my first paper (I discovered today this @AEAjournals tweet!). The topic is the estimation of the elasticity of consumption to transitory shocks.
AEA Journals @AEAjournals
New paper on payments anonymity: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
Anonymous digital cash provides consumers with a “bargaining tool.” Its mere existence may allow us to better negotiate compensation for the sharing of our data, in effect allowing us to monetize our (lack of) privacy.
New paper!
Blind Disclosure
Did your school move to P/F grading in the spring? Did you think, “economic theory predicts all students should stick with a letter grade, I wonder if they will?”
Then I have theory, evidence, and a thread for you 1/
The technology that produced the Moderna vaccine started being developed under NIH grants before being spun off into, as it was then capitalized, ModeRNA. NIH doesn't assert a rights to IP funded by its grants, they are open to be commercialized by others. A paper thread 👇👇
Dani Sandler @dhsandler
Other paper threads: on private equity and IPOs; on corporate debt overhangs and recessions; on labor market flows; on computing OSP mechanisms;markups aren’t countercyclical?; JEL paper on local policy choice;
Public goods
Some news I'm really excited about 🥳: with 30 other PhD students in Economics at LSE, we have launched a mentoring programme for PhD applicants from underrepresented backgrounds.
The programme is called AMP: lse.ac.uk/economics/stud…
Today, one of my longest-running research projects is finally coming to fruition. It's a comprehensive inventory of U.S. energy use from 1800 to 2019. Play around with the animation at us.sankey.rdcep.org!
#envhist #energy
1/x
RDCEP @RDCEPorg
Navel-gazing
A polite, scathing, and comprehensive reply by @jasndoc and coauthors to the "ergodicity economics" of @ole_b_peters.
@NaturePhysics erred in not finding a referee who would ask these basic questions of the authors, but glad a reply is out there.
nature.com/articles/s4156…
1/
^thread from one of the authors here
1/ New paper by @camharvey and me on the editorial process in econ-related fields. We argue against the all-too-common practice of applying the Union Heuristic: requiring authors to perform all requested tests and extensions suggested by referees.
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
Between 1946 and 2016, economists testified before Congress more than 10,000 times, more than double the other major social sciences combined. journals.plos.org/plosone/articl…
Which countries get too much attention in economic research relative to their GDP?
Fun map by The Economist
economist.com/graphic-detail…
This is what is known, I believe, as punching above one's weight:
highereddatastories.com/2020/12/baccal…
Job market papers
Key findings:
- Academic scientists spend less time analyzing data when there are more people working on the same protein (presumably, in order not to be scooped)
- This is associated with measurably lower quality protein models
^summary of a paper from Carolyn Stein & Ryan Hill (and the thread has more)
@stephaniedcheng looks at the gender gap in biological sciences academia. Bio is one of the most gender equal sciences at undergrad and grad level... The gap emerges for tenure track faculty for women w/ children as women move into jobs which require more standard working hours
@NinaRoussille investigates the "ask gap" in the online labor market Hired.com. She finds that women systematically ask for lower salaries than men, and this leads to a pay gap -- but that a small change in default on the platform can eliminate this pay gap entirely
^thread
Novel identification (plausibly random, non-arson building fires lower the cost of new construction) and data (scraped historical rents from Craigslist listings, and individual residents’ address histories) suggest construction improves neighborhoods and LOWERS rents 🏗
Kate Pennington @katempenn
A quick thread about current issues around markups. Many people have seen this figure, but there is still a lot of discussion around what it "means". Estimated markups appear to be rising but we aren't really sure why. 1/
^gets to JMP by James Brand
Interesting threads/discussions
History of optimal taxation theory, neatly summarized on one slide.
Etienne Lehmann @EtienneLehmannE
Interesting thread 👇.
1. agricultural employment is countercyclical as it absorbs excess labor.
2. small plot holding facilitate the role of the agricultural sector as insurance provider as many people have direct access to land.
3. Land consolidation hence comes at a cost https://t.co/yfHsY77PuG
Sabyasachi Kar @Sabya_K
Peloton is fascinating for academics.
Why do in person classes? Why have gyms?
It’s hard to build up the motivation to do either, so we usually need an in person coach.
Peloton figured out how to motivate at scale from a distance. Same in education would be a massive shift.
Austen Allred @Austen
^funny